In the final hours of her life, Elliot Fitch’s wife confesses that he is not the biological father to their 16-year old daughter. Surviving Goodbye follows Elliot’s collision course with Fate as he embarks on a journey to locate his daughter’s real father. When Elena, now seventeen years old, announces her unplanned pregnancy and the father’s unwillingness to play a role in their child’s upbringing, Elliot faces an ironic dilemma about the true meaning of parenthood and the roles we play in the lives of others, particularly those we love and who love us in return.<

Excerpt:

By the time you read this, I’ll be dead. I hope I had the chance to tell you this myself, but in the event that I couldn’t, I want you to know that from the moment we met, I loved you. So, so, so much. And these past few months dealing with the reality of my mortality have allowed me to reach into the depths of that love and see that what is sweet on one hand, is devastatingly sad on the other: You loved me with the depth and truth that most people never know. And because of that (here’s the devastating part), I know you won’t let go, even once I’m gone. It’s sweet to know that I owned your heart, body and soul for all of these years, but it crushes me that you will bury these things with my body and not only deprive yourself of life, of enjoying and sharing it with someone else but from love altogether… and that is the tragedy here. You deserve to live, breathe, taste, and love again. Elliot, that is what Love is, and that is what I want for you once I’m gone.